Has anyone else experienced this or is am I unusual? What I want to talk about is how strange my body reacts to learning intensely.
Since August 2024 I have attempted to learn Japanese as much as possible all day everyday, NEET style. For the first 9 months or so I was able to active read and active listen in the sentence view mode for 4-5 hours per day with usually 1-2 hours break in-between each hour. I would always feel exhausted, but still able to continue. (I was in good health as well)
At around 7 months my ability to continue took a nosedive. In the morning I would become so exhausted and nauseous that I would need to go back to sleep after just an hour or two of being awake, even with zero studying. Holding a conversation in English for even just 10 minutes would make my head feel like it was about to split. My working memory would be so poor that I couldn’t even read a sentence in Japanese without forgetting what came at the start of the sentence, making studying literally impossible. I wanted to keep studying, but I was forced to take days off and even once I started back up again I could only study for at most 2 hours per day, or else the next day I would feel sick. It seems there is only a certain amount of studying one can do per day without building up a debt of exhaustion overnight.
After taking some week/multi-week breaks as well as going lighter (1-2 hours per day) for several months, I recovered. I was able to do my original intensity from January - March, however, now I’m starting to fall back into that exhaustion.
I wanted to study as much as possible, but I was only able to average about 3.3 hours per day of actual studying if you don’t include breaks, which doesn’t seem like that much really. I am sure if I focused on listening or passive listening then I would have been able to do more, but I’d say about 90% of my studying time was active reading focused.
My final question I’m left with is how do full-time language learning schools/learners claim to teach/study for 8 hours per day for up to 88 weeks (FSI). Surely, they’re including breaks in that 8 hour period, no? Or maybe their learning materials/class sessions are much mentally lighter than just continuous active reading and listening. I wonder if there is anything I could have done differently. I did nearly nothing besides study and rest so it seems there’s no possible way I could have done more.
I realize I’m bragging a bit but hopefully some people find my experience interesting.
You probably experienced a burnout, and if this is the way your brain operates, I strongly suggest you pay attention and avoid it, because it could become much worse.
In any case, for languages, the brain needs breaks, because there are periods where you learn, and periods where your brain needs to metabolize what it has learnt. Don’t force your brain too much but learn to anticipate those moments.
There are no superheros as far as I know, and if they exist, you never know when they pay the price, and how. We are all different, don’t compare yourself to others but to yourself only, and we have all different characteristics as well.
You can also go very, very light, enjoy a 98% comprehension reading, or stop altogether for a bit. Even weekly. Give your brain some rest. You cannot grow if you don’t rest. It is like that for the body, and it is like that for the mind.
I think that 2-3hrs /day of active learning is great, you can spend the rest of the time to enjoy the language, play games, movies and etc in the language or read stuff below your level. For most people the main point of learning language is to enjoy using it.
Since you are feeling physical symptoms like nausea, feeling sick, mental exhaustion, memory issue, I think you are getting some kind of over training effect, your brain is telling you something. Similar to sports people who train too much. I get those type of symptoms if I am overworked, deadlines and etc due to work, stress or too much coffee and lack of sleep.
I think you have eventually found your limit, which seems to be between 2-4hrs. You could stick to 2hrs/day to be safe and slowly build up/tweak from there. You could do zero active studying on weekends (only do passive or nothing at all)
You don’t have to worry that you are not learning during your breaks, because breaks are important for learning too (or muscle growth for bodybuilders).
In Hungary, kids in school and adults in language schools learn in 45 minutes “hours” (called lesson in English). And kids don’t usually have 8 lessons a day, maybe if they have PE too that day. When I was a kid, in elementary I had 6 lessons a day, in high school 7.
Also, I assume your learning efficiency is better then those in school. So your 5 hours could be 8-9 hours equivalent to theirs.
Your symptoms indicate acute mental fatigue from sustained high-intensity cognitive effort. Prolonged active language processing exhausts cortical reserves, causing nausea, headache, and working memory collapse.
Institutes achieve “8-hour” days via frequent breaks, mixed activities, and lighter input.
Try 45-min Pomodoro cycles with 10-min walks. Alternate how long you walk with how long you study. Enforce 8+ hours sleep and daily exercise. Build tolerance gradually. This prevents relapse and sustains progress.
